Thursday, June 16, 2016

Even as the nation was barely coming to terms with an unfolding tragedy in Orlando, where a Muslim man shot dead 49 at a night club frequented by gays, Donald Trump tweeted self-congratulatory notes about being correct on terrorism. India's own Donald Trump, Aravindan Neelakandan, was not to be left behind. Neelakandan wrote a hate filled screed that is shameful, bigoted and plain nonsense, dangerous nonsense.

On June 12th Omar Mateen walked into 'Pulse', a gay nightclub, and mowed down 49 victims with a semi-automatic gun. Several are in grave condition in hospitals around Orlando. Mateen was shot and killed by a SWAT team. Donald Trump, a shameful bigoted nominee of the Republican party, trafficked innuendos that included alluding to Mateen being an immigrant, Mateen was born in US. America. To America's credit, Trump's innuendos are inviting a backlash.

It is complete idiocy to act as if Mateen, a Muslim, was singularly homophobic due to his religion. America has its fair share of homophobia that has nothing to do with Islam. Violence against homosexuals has a sordid history in America. From Matthew Shepard (1998) to Tyler Clementi (2010) gays have paid a very tragic price for their sexuality. Notably, Shepard was killed by Christians, Clementi was driven to suicide by Asians, a Chinese and a Tamil Hindu, at Rutgers University.

Trump and many Americans, and Neelakandan, are screaming 'terrorism', 'radical islam' for what Mateen did. Yes, it is terrorism. But what do we call the massacre of blacks in a church by white supremacist Dylan Roof? Why is the latter only grudgingly called 'racism' or more politely 'gun violence' but not terrorism? Yes, the duo of San Bernardino who killed office goers are terrorists. But what do we call a guy who opens fire on movie goers in a theater? America has a gun problem. To pretend that a guy who attributes his killing to a religion is somehow more dangerous than others is dodging a key problem. Sure, let's not dodge radicalization but let's not dodge other sicknesses too that result in such loss of life.

If Mateen's homophobia is to be blamed on radical Islam, or just Islam, what do we call the Evangelicals of America who froth at their mouth against marriage equality? Incidentally, homosexuality remains criminalized in Aravindan Neelakandan's India.

Neelakandan's Islamophobia turns him into an apologist for even the LTTE, a murderous terrorist organization that was known for ruthless assassinations with complete disregard for human life. In order to satisfy the itch of his Islamophobia Neelakandan nonchalantly states that LTTE even while carrying out assassinations takes care to "minimize human losses"with "meticulously planned attacks". This viper which spews hatred argues that if only the attack against Rajeev Gandhi had gone according to plan only Rajiv and the suicide bomber would've died. This is nonsense. The assassin had a belt bomb that used ball bearings and projectiles designed to kill not just the intended victim but anybody in the radius so effectively that Rajiv could not have escaped death. The LTTE stood exposed as a murderous outfit when it used the very people that it was supposed to liberate as human shields and even started shooting at the same people when they sought to escape to the safety of the Sri Lankan troops. Why am I surprised at the mendacity of Neelakandan, after all, he swears by the organization that was an inspiration to the assassin of Gandhi.

Neelakandan details gruesome acts by terrorists, including a pregnant woman being shot dead. He happily forgets that Hindus in Gujarat unleashed equally murderous and similar grotesque deeds against Muslims. While he plays psychologist diagnosing that even if one escapes a terrorist attack the "trauma" of the killers eyes that singled you out for your faith will leave an indelible mark, he cooly forgets that it was a marauding band of Hindu politicians who embarked on an unprecedented genocide in nowhere but the very capital of the nation against hapless individuals whose only fault was that they were Sikhs. We would do well to remember that one of the worst airline related tragedies was courtesy the Sikhs in Canada. Hindu policemen murdered in cold blood youth, whose only mistake was that they were Muslim, in Hashimpura and not a single one was convicted. Thousands of Muslims were massacred in Nellie and the report is still classified secret. When Muslims perpetrate terror attacks the perpetrators, and many times several innocents too, face the iron hand of Indian law but more often than not when it is Muslims who have faced attacks the Indian state, both Congress and BJP governments, have done little to bring the guilty to book.

The murder of Kashmiri Pandits, by Muslim Kashmiri separatists, is indeed a blood soaked chapter in the history of Kashmir. While Neelakandan weeps for them he happily forgets how Muslims evacuated villages as the juggernaut of Advani's Rath Yatra rolled inexorably towards Ayodhya.

Hinduism is "inherently pluralist, democratic and inherently secular" claims Neelakandan. This is absolute myth. No religion is inherently pluralist or democratic or secular. Pluralism and secularism, the corner stones of a liberal nation-state, are modern ideas that were enshrined in Indian constitution by not just Nehru but including other men who were far greater than Neelakandan, or me.The women and children who were burned in Keezhvenmani will completely disagree with Neelakandan's Goebbelsian propaganda. Neelakandan claims that the RSS, a neo-nazi organization, supports decriminilazing homosexuality and extends his fantasy claim to assert that even those who disagree with that sexuality "concede that it is a personal matter" and then chides Islam as being uncomfortable with such pluralism. Narendra Modi, Neelakandan's political idol, rules with a brute majority in the Parliament, pray, why has he not then moved a legislation to decriminalize homosexuality in India? How many rallies or agitations has RSS undertaken to further the cause of LGBT community? Compare that to how many times RSS supporters and office holders speak about Hindu causes.

Supporting Israel is another bogey for the Hindutva brigade. While I support Israel I'd say that it is hideous to whitewash what happened to Palestinians over the decades. I wish Palestinians had had better leaders but that said the tears shed by Neelakandan for Israel are just crocodile tears. Reducing the hatred of Palestinians towards Israel as "more to do with the theological hatred Islamism bears towards Jews than land issues" is sheer mendacity.

An interesting news that caught my eye recently was Hindus in India praying for the election of Donald Trump as America's president because they believe that Trump will defend America from what they consider as the menace of Islam. The Hindutva far right, of whom quite a few live in US too, is cheering Trump without realizing that the bigotry and xenophobia that Trump is unleashing will affect Indians too. America, I hope, will defeat Trump.

The hypocrisies of the Hindutva group in US needs mention. Neelakandan's co-author of a recently published book is a US resident and complete supporter of everything he dishes out. Recently she had shared on her Facebook page an anti-Islamic rant by a white American asking why should America accommodate the beliefs of Muslim immigrants. I asked her does she, a Hindu and therefore a minority in US, realize that she expects US to accommodate her beliefs? Indians take immense pride when the White House celebrates Diwali and even schools in Hindu majority neighborhoods in US declare Diwali a holiday. Corporations now celebrate Diwali and one should see Hindu workers turn out in all their finery and lecture to wide eyed Americans about the greatness of Indian culture.

Despite all the Trump related noise there is hope in America. The Lt. Governor of Utah, a deeply conservative state, gave a moving speech in the wake of the Orlando shooting. He recounted how growing up in a small town he used to mock gays in his school days and apologized for not having known better. People like Spencer Cox and Barack Obama, yes I mean that, will leave America a better place. I know there are sensible people in India too and they fight the good fight against the Neelakandans who are trying to destroy India. May the will of good people prevail over the hate mongers.

Monday, June 13, 2016

When historian Irfan Habib told, in an interview, that the slogan 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' (Long live mother India) was a colonial era reaction by nationalists who were influenced by European traditions, the reactions amongst Indians ranged from running around like headless chicken to mild disapproval. Overnight most Indians became indignant literary sleuths and dredged up every verse they had come across where land or kingdoms of yore had been worshipped as goddess. A furor ensued and the historian remained silent. No one bothered to ask Habib why he said so and what were the evidences beyond pointing out to the example of Britannia, England depicted as lady. Was Habib wrong?

Sumathi Ramaswamy, professor of history at Duke University, has written an engaging book, "The goddess and the Nation:Mapping mother India", which goes to the heart of the claim that Habib made.

Ramaswamy opens with the following words, "In the closing decades of the nineteenth century in a land already thronging with all manner of gods and goddesses there surfaced a novel deity of nation...Invoked in English as "Mother India", and most usually in various Indian languages as "Bharat Mata"". The first depiction of Bharat Mata, like Habib said, was in a painting by Abanindranath Tagore. The portrait, suffused with symbolisms, depicted a young lady clothed in saffron colored saree, tied austerely around her, with four hands, lotuses around the feet and a halo. The portrait was captioned "The spirit of motherland".

"The Spirit of Motherland" by Abanindranath Tagore 1904-05

The vivisection of Bengal by Lord Curzon saw all of Bengal rise up in revolt and "Bharat Mata was used as a mobilizing artifact". A police raid in 1908 'on the premises of the Dacca based Anushilan Samiti" recovered a portrait of "Bharat Mata-the map of India represented by a woman in flowing garments".

Before the advent of Gandhi Bengali nationalism swept the country providing the ideological flavor to the new idea of nationalism and religious reforms. Tamil poet Bharathi, no doubt influenced by Bengali traditions, wrote a poem extolling Tamil, the Tamils, Bharata (India) and ended with what was fast becoming a clarion call of the freedom struggle, 'Vande Mataram' (I worship you mother). The poem published around the customary New Year celebrated according to Tamil calendar, April 20th 1907, was featured in the magazine 'Inthiya', run by Bharathi. The cover of that issue featured a lady seated on rock, her hand resting on a globe showing the map of India and Indians, a Hindu, a Muslim and others, paying obeisance to her. Bharathi used such imagery often. Another image published on April 10th 1909 showed a lady, super imposed within the cartographic representation of India with babies suckling at her breasts, as before Indians of various religions looking up to her, the words "Vande Mataram", in Devanagari script, on the right and even a 'Allahu Akbar', in urdu and in relatively diminutive script of the left.Even latter day iconoclast and virulent atheist E.V. Ramasamy Naicker used a depiction of Bharat Mata super imposed within a map of India in the mast head of his paper 'Kudiarasu' circa 1925.

From Bharati's 'Inthiya" April 20 1907

Habib is no idiot not to have known the propensity to worship land in the form of a goddess. The fecundity of land has, from time immemorial, been equated, in all civilizations, to the fertility of woman. Anthropologically possessing land has been similarly equated with possessing woman. "Bharat Mata is fundamentally a novel, even unorthodox, goddess". What differentiates Bharat Mata from other goddesses is "intervention of the map of India into her visual persona". The cartographic intervention shows that the depiction of the female form is "no longer adequate in and of itself in embodying territory once the the scientific map form arrives on the scene". "In traditional Hindu iconography goddesses are not generally shown carrying a banner, yet the flag is certainly one of the Mother India's signature possessions".

The depiction of Bharat Mata drawing upon ancient Hindu iconography is what gives Habib's naysayers ammunition to protest that the depiction is not an European import but a hallowed tradition. Ramasawamy cites Sudipto Kaviraj to label this, very aptly, "subterfuges of antiquity". Ignorance fueled by jingoism made the naysayers to ignore the fact that the depiction of Bharat Mata while seemingly antiquated is actually a unique and novel addition to the ever burgeoning Hindu pantheon of divinities.

We don't know if Habib had read Ramaswamy's book for Ramaswamy builds her case exactly on the lines of what Habib said. Ramaswamy points to anthropomorphizing countries in European tradition, a tradition unknown in Indian heritage. Anthropomorphizing, the art of representing nations or a people in corporeal images, a geo-body representation, is a distinctly European import to India. The East India Company commissioned in 1778, probably to commemorate their victory in Battle of Plassey in 1776, a painting for the East India office in London by the Italian painter Spiridone Roma. Roma painted Britannia, a representation of England, as a lady in a white robe while the East, depicted as a bare breasted dark skinned lady, offering her riches. The bare breasted East is symbolic of a naked female in all its 'vulnerability' and even a 'invitation to conquest'. A similar portrait, circa 1575, showed America, the newly discovered continent, as a "naked and erotically inviting woman".

Ramaswamy says that "corporealizing countries" has been traced by scholars to European Renaissance. Abraham Ortelius's 'Theatrum Orbis Terararum', possibly the first atlas of the world, depicts Europe, Asia, Africa and America in various forms of women. The newly discovered science of cartography rapidly merged into this iconography in a parade of portraits that Ramswamy details one after another to show how nations, portrayed as women, were either super imposed on maps or their forms very artistically skewed to fit a map. 'Europa Regina', circa 1537; a portrait of Queen Elizabeth standing on a map, circa 1592, a picture of Britannia seated on a map of England all point to an emerging trend of marrying anthropomorphizing countries with cartography thus imparting a powerful message of suzerainty. Maps, "enable the nations citizens to take visual and conceptual possession of the land that they imagine they inhabit". "Bharat Mata is no generic earth, earlier or mother goddess (although she is also all of these); instead she is a very specific kind of territorial deity, one who embodies and presides over a delimited, nameable, identifiable geo-body".

Ramaswamy brilliantly captures that, "it is at the cusp of the 'same but different' and the 'old but also new' that we can identify the forces and pressures including the (re)conceptualization of India as a cartographer Mother India".

Discussing Bankim Chandra's iconic classic 'Ananda Math' Ramaswamy quotes Sudipto Kaviraj, "to see the country as the mother is highly non-standard in Hindu mythology. It (depicting country as goddess) is a transposition, using traditional figures certainly, but to purposes that are highly innovative". In 'Ananda Math' hearing Bhavananda sing 'Vande Mataram' Mahindra inquires "who is this mother?" Bhavananda sings the second verse of that song in reply and Mahendra inquires "But this is my country; this is not my mother!" Bhavananda admonishes him "We say our motherland is the mother". Bipin Chandra Pal wrote in "The Soul of India", "The earth that we tread on is not a mere bit of geological structure. It is the physical embodiment of the mother. Behind this physical and geographical body there is a Being, a Personality".

Aurobindo Ghosh, firebrand revolutionary from Bengal, "I look upon my country as the Mother. I adore her. I worship Her as the Mother. What would a son do if a demon sat on his mother's breast and started sucking her blood?"

Disappointingly Ramaswamy does not connect Ghosh's imagery with his compatriot Bharati's verses about 'Motherland'. Bharathi wrote copiously about Motherland. He wrote of India as a mother, a distraught mother, a yearning mother and even a vengeful mother. Echoing Ghosh Bharathi asks "what is this life worth if the mlecchas who defile the holy mother land are not killed?' and in another verse he's more blistering, "who amongst us, like a dog, will tolerate a mother being violated?". That sons are the custodians of a mother's chastity speaks directly to a patriarchal society where possession of land and women are symbols of manhood. Though Tamil poems have spoken of land as woman Bharathi was charting new territory and essentially offering new metaphors for patriotism that, while drawing upon a tradition, was "old but new". It is this newness that Habib drew attention to.

Rabindranath Tagore, amongst India's intellectuals, was the most conflicted on the idea of strident nationalism. Ramaswamy uses Tagore's 'The Home and the World' to highlight the poet's conflict. Sandip, a character, tells Bimala, the heroine "the geography of a country is not the whole truth. No one can give up his life for a map!". "True patriots, will never be roused in our countrymen unless they can visualize the motherland. We must make a goddess of her". A temple, inaugurated by none other than Gandhi himself, enshrined a map of India and offered it as an object of worship in a temple for Bharat Mata.

The iconography of Bharat Mata is very interesting if one observes the fact that almost without exception the Mother is portrayed as svelte woman, curvaceous, but never with children. Bharat Mata is asexual and offers a blank stare into the void even when there are others, often only men, looking at her worshipfully. The men, Ramaswamy says, "are generally pictured as figures of their times","whereas Mother India's face is invariably remote and otherworldly".

Ramswamy identifies the role of bazaar artists, 'barefoot cartographers', who helped proliferate the iconography of Bharat Mata. An important contribution is how the leaders of the freedom struggle were often portrayed in pictures of cartographed Bharat Mata. Gandhi was the most popular of such depiction including a Pieta style portrait showing a slain Gandhi lying prone on Bharat Mata's lap. Prior to the arrival of Gandhi and his philosophy of non-violence it was common to see Bharat Mata depicted as goddess of war, akin to Durga. Bhagat Singh and Subhash Bose brought back some of that flavor with portrayals of even blood soaked sacrifice where, for instance, Bhagat Singh would offer his decapitated head to Bharat Mata.

Bhagat Singh offering his decapitated head. This was a recruitment poster published in 1966.

While the iconography of Bharat Mata was a recent one it is telling that the image is, without exception, even when non-Hindu artists portray, that of a Hindu goddess. Even textbooks, supposed to be secular in a free India nonchalantly adopted this imagery without debate.

Khushwant Singh, India's gadfly like author, makes an interesting observation in his short and very readable "India: An Introduction, published in 1990. "They (Indians) visualize it (India) as Mother India with her head in the snowy Himalayas, her arms stretched from the Punjab to the Assam, her ample bosom and middle (the Indian concept of feminine beauty requires a woman to be big breasted and heavy hipped) resting on the Indo-Gangetic plain and the Deccan, and her feet bathed by the waters of the Indian Ocean. Sri Lanka is like a lotus petalled foot stool". Ramaswamy also draws attention to the depiction of Sri Lanka, as lotus petalled stool, in many portraits of Bharat Mata. It is therefore evident that cartography and the barefoot cartographer, made possible by the printing press, is a pre-requisite for creating and popularizing the Bharat Mata iconography.

A picture similar to what Khushwant Singh describes.

About the book itself, a few words. The book is lushly illustrated and lays out the evidence with solid facts and solid research. The scholarship, as one would expect from a book published by a University like Duke, is impartial and ground breaking. The writing style leaves little to be desired though. The writing is dense and lacks lucidity. The author intruding into the text in first person singular is irritating as if the reader is unintelligent. It is grating to see the author, in first person singular, to repeatedly jump in and say that she is expanding on a certain point or persona in a specific later chapter. I'd expect an intelligent reader to make that connection. An unpardonable mistake is the translation of Bharathi's poem on Tamil in the 1907 issue of Inthiya. Where Bharathi refers to "Aryan land" Ramaswamy unpardonably translates omits that characterization of India.

Pieta style portrait of Gandhi and Bharat Mata published circa 1948

My favorite author, Jeyamohan and favorite adversary, fart obsessed blogger Othisaivu, took umbrage at Irfan Habib's opinion. Jeyamohan ( http://www.jeyamohan.in/86293#.V14o8VfijjU) was livid that Habib, for whom he professed some admiration, had the temerity to say such an opinion from a public stage. He was also indignant that Habib's remark will play into the politicized climate of India where support and opposition for the opinion will fall, predictably, along political lines and no one would take the pains to know the truth. Of course what Jeyamohan hints as truth here is that Habib was wrong and that the iconography, unlike what Habib said, was an ancient tradition. Unfortunately, predicting that reaction will be along political lines without an attempt to ferret truth Jeyamohan himself not only adopts a political stand but gives space to a Hindutva voice, a committed reader of his books, which heaps not just scorn on Habib but maligns him as a liar in the mould of a Nehrzvian-Marxist. I looked for proof, impartially, in favor or against what Habib said and found Ramaswamy's book. The facts presented by Ramswamy appears to validate Habib. If there is a counter proof, written in the academic style of Ramaswamy, I'll be happy to consider it and retract this blog.

Jeyamohan is also indignant that Habib, reportedly, wanted to use historical research to oppose Saffron politics. What is wrong with what Habib said? That is perfectly the role of an intellectual and an academic. When academics is divorced from contemporary events and is content with distant concerns we unerringly call it as inhabiting an 'ivory tower'. Battling the menace of fascism and totalitarianism is exactly the duty of an intellectual and an academic. Academicians need to provide the intellectual fire power to defenders of a plural and secular republic lest the republic falls to the forces of fascism. Let there be more Habibs who supply the ballast in the most important battle of any republic, defending against fascist thuggery.

PS: All images in this blog are featured in the book in the same context I've mentioned above. I found the images online by googling.

Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Several readers understood my last blog, regarding how science diverged from philosophy and progressed beyond the ancient philosophical paradigms, Indian or Western, appropriately. The readers also understood that I was not rejecting a study of any philosophy but only rejecting the notion that modern science and knowledge could still function within those paradigms. However, several readers took issue with the blog and misconstrued that I was rejecting the contributions of Indian, specifically Hindu, philosophy. A reader pointed out to Manjul Bhargava, Indian-American recipient of Fields medal, crediting his knowledge of Sanskrit for providing key insights, based on ancient Indian works, into mathematics. Yes, that's true but that's not the whole truth.

First, let me categorically state that I agree with the many studies that point out to the importance of a knowledge of liberal arts for any graduate. Study after study has pointed out that students must have an introduction to classical literature, philosophy and music. University education in America, unlike India, lays a heavy stress on liberal arts. Indian students of engineering and medicine would do well to learn Kalidasa, the upanishad and many other local variants of literature and philosophy in addition to at least an introduction of Plato, Socrates and Shakespeare.

Second, I fully and completely support books of unimpeachable academic quality that explore ancient India's contributions to science and arts. If a beautifully academic book on how Baudhayana's math presages Pythagoras can be written I'd happily buy it.

That said, what irritates and angers me are twofold. One, wallowing in wooly mysticism and connecting everything modern in science to ancient wisdom turning a blind eye to tenuous connections. Two, showing an interest only in the jingoism of establishing what the world learned from India and not even bothering to inquire into the possibilities of any influence from outside on Indian wisdom.

India has arrived on the world stage as an economic power, a strategic partner and a key exporter of talent but Indians still belabor under an inferiority complex showing an undue and ugly eagerness to grab credit for achievements of not just Indian expatriates but even those of Indian descent. This ugliness becomes more despicable when achievements by Indians could be tied to Indian heritage of yore.

Manjul Bhargava, born in Canada to Indian parents, enjoyed a tsunami of publicity when he won the very prestigious Fields medal, one of two highest honor in mathematics, awarded to mathematicians under the age of 40 who've made a significant contribution. The very boyish looking mathematician has a stellar resume that boasts of winning honors like he was collecting candy and a tenured professorship at Princeton at 30 years of age.

Manjul Bhargava - Image Courtesy Wikipedia

Indians went crazy over interviews of Bharghava that mentioned how he was thrilled to find mathematical ideas from Sanskrit texts of ancient Indian mathematicians.When Bharagava said he saw mathematics in everything including Sanskrit and the tabla music he played Indians, to put it mildly, almost had a collective orgasm. When Bhargava came to India he was feted and everywhere he went he was asked to speak on how great Sanskrit was. Sanskrit institute located in, where else, Mylapore felicitated Bhargava and had him lecture on, what else but, "Sanskrit and Mathematics".

Amidst the din what was lost is there's much more to the Bhargava story than just Sanskrit and tabla. Bhargava's grandfather was a Sanskrit scholar who had jotted down excerpts from ancient texts but, let us painfully remind ourselves, was nowhere close to winning a Fields medal. Bhargava is a typical product of western education and a story that's almost impossible to be replicated in India, under both its current and past education system.

Bhargava's mother was a mathematician at the Hofstra university in Long Island, NY and played an instrumental role in turning the boy's interest in mathematics into a career. Bhargava is not the first and nor would he be the last genius from the western world who takes a multi-disciplinary approach to the chosen subject. American university system lays a stress on diversified thinking and drawing inspiration from as many sources as possible. This western approach is why a Schrodinger could easily see in Vedanta a spark for his quantum theory while no Indian philosopher or Indian scientist could connect the dots similarly. Bhargava's theory that won him the Fields medal was inspired by the Rubik's cube and was the result of a journey from Bhramgupta to Gauss.

That Bhargava won prize after prize in America shows a society where meritocracy rules (along side affirmative action). A 27 year old Bhargava was a visiting scholar in that most American of research institutes, The Institute for Advanced Study. The Institute for Advanced Study was established in Princeton by Abraham Flexner who had played a vital role in reforming medical education in America. Flexner's article, published in 1939 in Harper's Weekly, titled "The usefulness of useless knowledge" is an intellectual tour-de-force and sets the objectives of the Institute where Fellows could indulge in anything that might fancy them without the pressure of having to invent anything or create anything in particular responding to any external demand. A Harvard professor , Flexner recalls in the article, who was given a stipend wrote to Flexner asking "what are my duties" and Flexner replied "you have no duties. only opportunities". This is where Bharagava flowered.

Bhargava to his credit has been clear that while he'd like to see books about contributions of Indians he insisted that it should be accurate."It's not your agenda to show everything originated in India. It's your agenda to show what originated in India in an accurate and clear way".

I wish Bhargava had been asked to speak about research topics in mathematics but Indians were interested in only thing, to get a Fields medal awardee to speak in glowing terms of an ancient heritage and nothing more.Once any Indian expatriate wins any award abroad the Indian government of the day will make a despicable show of awarding some Padma award. Bhargava was awarded the Padma Bhushan. V.S. Naipaul, most acerbic and acidic critic of India, wrote in his 'India: A wounded civilization' about how India treated Har Govind Khorana, "India invited him back and feted him; but what was most important about him was ignored. 'We could do everything for Khorana,' one of India's best journalists said,'except do him the honor of discussing his work.'"

A reader pointed to an interview by George Geverghese Joseph's interview in 'The Hindu' which spoke about how possibly work done mathematicians in Kerala could have traveled to Europe and influenced Isaac Newton's conceptualization of the infinite series. Incidentally I had bought Joseph's critically acclaimed book "The Crest of the Peacock: Non-European roots of mathematics", published by Princeton University.

Joseph's book speaks of ancient Indian mathematics and in addition has lengthy chapters on Egyptian and Chinese contributions but the interviewer from 'The Hindu' chose to ask him only about how great Kerala's mathematicians were. My reader complained, borrowing from Joseph, about a Euro-centric view on the history of sciences that ignores contributions, probably more significant, by non-Europeans.

Many Indians who are critical of India's education system and yearn for what they consider the fabled past of ancient Indian education system without fail gnash their teeth about Macaulay's imperialist comment that a shelf of European literature is worth more than a library of oriental literature. A recent controversy over Professor Sheldon Pollock, editor of the Murty library of Indian literature, cited a passage from a speech of his that appeared insulting to India. The protest letter was signed by professors from all and sundry universities of India including professors of Sanskrit who, unlike Pollock, had no publication. A simple google search revealed that Pollock's statement was deliberately torn out of context and twisted. The age of colonial imperialists like Macaulay is long gone but Indians, including Joseph, recycle statements of a bygone century to present a world at war.

Indians do not realize that many books that document India's rich heritage are courtesy of Westerners. A sharp reviewer of Joseph's book points out that Joseph draws a connection between Euclid's legendary book 'Elements' and Panini's grammar but he fails to credit Frits Staal who first wrote about such a connection. The reviewer also accurately picks issue with Joseph broad generalization every unsympathetic view as "western" and almost intentionally ignoring other westerners who worked to give a more honest history of ideas. It is also unfair to charge that but for an Indian author like Joseph the oriental contributions would not receive their due. The reviewer points to several examples by European authors in that regard.

To circle back, demanding an accurate history to be written is fair and necessary too. However, it appears that Indians are more interested in writing history, that too an exaggerated one, than in worrying about the pathetic state of Indian education and academics today. Several of the signors on the protest letter against Pollock teach in IITs and JNU, including Makarand Paranjape, and all of them are just plain guilty of witch hunt of a good professor of unimpeachable academic credentials.

Bhargava is also the recipient of the "Ramanujan Prize" from SASTRA university (my alma mater). While 3 Indians figure on the list of Ramanujan Prize since it was instituted in 2005 not one of them did their work in any Indian university. Ironically, at SASTRA a tech festival was held for which a computer science student wrote a blog about how a weapon used in Mahabharata was the precursor of modern day Inter-continental-ballistic-missile. This is how Indian universities are being run.

While India went insane over Bhargava and his love of Sanskrit it was conveniently ignored that there were 3 other awardees for the Fields medal. Amongst the other awardees were an Iranian woman and a Latin American mathematician. I'm sure that those two have no idea of Sanskrit or Tabla and still won the Fields medal.

When Indian's count Indian Nobel laureates they often include Amartya Sen, Venky Ramakrishnan, Har Govind Khurana and S. Chandrasekhar. Though Sen won the prize as an Indian, unlike the others, he too did his work in foreign universities and was, like the others, a product of western universities.

For unsurprising reasons Venky Ramakrishnan's name is rarely mentioned unlike Bhargava's name. Ramakrishnan, as usual, was feted by India after he won the Nobel and he too was given the Har Govind Khorana treatment. Ramakrishnan was invited to attend the Indian Science Congress, a venerable institution that stretches back to the Colonial era actually. Aghast at seeing paper presentations about how ancient Indian epics had the precursor of modern flights Ramakrishnan said "the Indian science congress is a circus" and that he'd never ever attend it again. After his Nobel prize it was rumored that Ramakrishnan took up a job in a premier Indian lab, he vehemently refuted it saying "Nobody has approached me about an offer to work in India. However, I can categorically state that if they did so, I would refuse immediately".

It is laughable when an Indian author, known for his militant fundamentalist outlook in favor of Hinduism, called Hindutva, asserted that J.C. Bose could arrive at the conclusion that plants respond to stimuli because his Indian worldview is, unlike the western, is a holistic one. Andrea Wulf's critically acclaimed biography of Alexander Von Humboldt quotes Humboldt, "In this great chain of causes and effects no single fact can be considered in isolation". Wulf, continues, "with this insight he invented the web of life, the concept of nature as we know it today". Humboldt, Wulf points out, influenced a wide array of intellectuals. Thomas Jefferson, Charles Darwin, William Wordsworth, Coleridge and Henry David Thoreau were influenced by Humboldt. Wordsworth, incidentally, also was in awe of Isaac Newton. Goethe, who admired Humboldt, wrote 'The Faust', laid the foundations of morphology and a treatise on light, "Theory of colors". Vladimir Nabokov wrote 'Lolita' and researched butterflies. Nabokov's theory on the evolution of butterflies was recently proved correct. While it is difficult to list Indian thinkers who showed diverse interests or achieved in diverse fields it is common to see such personae in the western intellectual tradition.

Alexander Von Humboldt - Image Courtesy Wikipedia

Write history all you want but the more urgent need for India today, is not in proving that Bhaudhayana was better than Pythagoras but in creating an institutional framework that can produce a Manjul Bhargava.

Monday, June 6, 2016

A recent Tamil book makes the case that Erwin Schrodinger was inspired by Vedanta in formulating his theories on quantum physics. The authors then proceeded to speciously argue for the continued relevance of Hindu Philosophy, knowledge systems, to today's world. In this backdrop it is pertinent to trace the point at which science roared forward unmoored from philosophical speculations and in the process creating its own paradigms. Isaac Newton marks the clear point at which science divorced itself from what was hitherto called philosophy.

Concluding the chapter on Aristotle Will Durant wrote "all the world awaited the resurrection of philosophy". Starting with Roger Bacon in the 13th century Europe saw a fervid efflorescence of genius. Tyco Brahe, Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo, Vesalius and Harvey took human knowledge into new frontiers. "It was an age of achievement, hope, and vigor; of new beginnings and enterprises in every field; an age that waited for a voice". The voice was embodied in Francis Bacon.

Isaac Newton(Image Courtesy Wikipedia)

The explosion of knowledge that accompanied what Durant called "Age of Reason" was unprecedented in human history. Sir Thomas Bodley who established the Bodleian Library (1598) in Oxford "obtained from the Stationers Company a grant whereby the Bodleian Library that he had established at Oxford (1598) was to receive a copy of every book published in England". France and Germany saw similar libraries. Germany made elementary education compulsory for both sexes in 1565, rapidly other European cities followed. The Church which receives a justifiable rap for its confrontation with science nevertheless played a vital role in furthering the goal of education. "In France every parish had to maintain an elementary school". "In 1685 the Christian Brothers opened what was probably the first modern institutions for the training of elementary school teachers". Nearly two hundred universities were opened between 1550s to late 17th century.

Isaac Newton, born on Dec 25th 1642 in Woolsthorpe, entered a world where slowly but surely science, thanks to Francis Bacon, was stepping out of the shadows of philosophy. Bacon, James Gleick's biography of Newton says, lamented "all the philosophy of nature which is now recieved, is either the philosophy of the Grecians, or that other of the alchemists...The one is gathered out of a few vulgar observations, and the other out of a few experiments of a furnace. The one never faileth to multiply words, and other ever faith to multiply gold". Bacon, Gleick points out, "argued for experiment". When the Royal Society was established in 1660 with the motto 'Nullius in verba" Bacon was adopted as the patron saint. The age of telescope and microscope had arrived. "It (the Royal Society) exalted communication and condemned secrecy".

Robert Hooke who served as the Curator of Experiments in the Royal Society wrote in his "Microphagia", tat science should now "return to the plainness and soundness of Observations" and away from what it was hitherto, a "work of the Brain and Fancy".

A society for science dedicated to communicate faced the question of which language to use. Though Latin was the obvious choice the members felt "it was time for plain speaking, the most naked of expression, and when possible this meant the language of mathematics". The Royal Society was not alone, soon Europe saw a host of societies established where, most importantly, men of science congregated and debated without the constraints of social status. Gleick quotes an entry from Samuel Pepys's diary on how the Society organized science exhibitions for Londoners. This was a quantum leap. Let's return to Newton's story.

Thanks to Stokes, the schoolmaster at Grantham where Newton attended school, and his uncle, a rector, Isaac Newton was sent to Trinity college at the University of Cambridge for further studies. A civil war, plague, a rebellion and a regicide (if hanging Cromwell's corpse could be called so) formed the climate in which Newton attended college. Newton read avidly, particularly Aristotle. Aristotle idea of "motion" was elastic enough to consider a "piece of bronze becoming a statue" as motion. That meant, Gleick says, "philosophers were not ready to make fine distinctions between velocity and acceleration". Aristotle had famously said "Plato is my friend, but truth my greater friend". Newton added Aristotle to that and wrote in his notebook "Plato amicus Aristoteles magic amica veritas".

Descartes had earlier married algebra to geometry yielding a new discipline. "He treated one unknown as a spatial dimension, a line; two unknowns thus define a plane....Equations generated curves; curves embodied equations". To that Newton added the question of motion which embraced the infinite and the infinitesimal together. "To measure curvature was to find rate of change".

In 1665, soon afterNewton graduated, Cambridge was closed due to plague ravaging England. Back in Woolsthorpe Newton worked alone and laid the foundations of calculus, theories on gravitation and light. Newton returned to Cambridge in 1667 and was elected a fellow. He took the oath to "embrace the true religion of Christ with all my soul". "Chastity was expected. Marriage was forbidden". In 1669, at the age of 27, Isaac Newton became the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. The mathematician's heart was in physics though.

Newton's paper on the nature of white light was read in the Royal Society in 1672. Newton, Gleick says, "declared triumphantly-"that light consists of Rays different refrangible". Hooke objected to Newton's theory that proposed light was "corpuscular" in nature, particles. Newton responded that "that followed from his theory and not the other way round". Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens also joined the debate on the "wave theory" side. Newton felt insulted and wanted to withdraw from the Royal Society. "He had tried to show how science is grounded in concrete practice rather than grand theories". As these debates raged Newton, in 1675, reached another milestone. In the seventh year of his fellowship Newton was required to take the "holy orders and be ordained to the Anglican clergy". Gaelic notes "England's universities were above all else instruments of Christianity". Newton was spared the ordeal by the King who exempted the "Lucasian professorship, in perpetuity, from the obligation".

Hooke and Newton would clash again when the "Principia Mathematica" was published. Both Hooke and Newton had rejected the Cartesian idea of "vortices" to explain planetary motion. Both were circling around the ideas that "a body orbiting another in an inverse-square gravitational field" would trace an elliptical curve. Conversely, they also realized that a gravitational force law to describe a body tracing an elliptical curve around another body can only be a "inverse-square law". Hooke did not have mathematical proof but Newton did. Edmund Halley and Flamsteed who were calculating data about meteors supplied Newton with theories and data. Newton, Gleick shows in scintillating pages, went where no philosopher or philosophy went. Book III, The System of the World, "gathered together the phenomena of the cosmos. It did this flaunting an exactitude unlike anything in the history of philosophy". Gone are the flights of fancy of a philosopher or dreary sophistries of reasoning and in its place science arrived with exactitude. Hooke wanted credit for the inverse square law, which in reality was nothing more than a guess until Newton supplied the mathematical proof. Newton was irked and he called philosophy a "litigious lady that a man had as good be engaged in law suits". Halley published the Principia out of his funds.

Newton was charged with promoting atheism, a dangerous charge in that era.Will Durant writes "he appended to the second edition a general scholium on the role of God in his system". Though Newton kept up the appearances of a devout Christian in private he was anything but. Gleick says he preferred writing "AC (after Christ) instead of AD". Newton questioned the idea of trinity, a heretical and dangerous sacrilege then. To Newton Christ was less than God the Father. Though celibate Newton confessed to not only sexual thought but charged his friend Locke of having tried to entice him with women.

Hooke died in 1703 and Newton ascended to the power at the Royal Society. In 1704 Newton published his next major work "Opticks" which revolutionized the understanding light. Along with Opticks Newton published a paper "On the Quadrature of Curves" that laid down the fundamentals of Calculus. German mathematician Leibniz who had corresponded with Newton on what he called "fluxions" claimed that he too was the inventor of this new mathematics. As president of Royal Society Newton was judge, jury and prosecutor. Newton literally forged documents in his favor. History has now declared both Leibniz and Newton as co-inventors of Calculus.

What did Newton, specifically the Principia, achieve? James Gleick is categorical, "Newton had made claims that could be tested". In 1733 the French Academy of Scoences proved Newton was correct that the earth was "broader at the equator". Gleick is emphatic, "The Principia marked a fork in the road: thenceforth science and philosophy went separate ways". "By mathematizing science science, he made it possible for its facts and claims to be proved wrong". Conceding that Einstein's Relativity shook the world of Newtonian determinism Gleick cites Thomas Kuhn who suggested that "Einstein had turned science to problems and beliefs". However, Gleick cautions, "Einstein did shake space-time loose from pins to which Newton had bound it, but he lived in Newton's space-time nonetheless: absolute in its geometrical rigor", "he happily brandished the tools Newton had forged".

Isaac Newton was celebrated in prose by Alexander Pope and Wordsworth, William Blake drew a portrait of him, Voltaire studied him and literally proselytized for him in France, he was knighted and when he died nobles were his pall bearers and he was interred in the Westminster Abbey.

"Newton with his prism and silent face
The marble index of a mind for ever
Voyaging through strange seas of thought alone" --- William Wordsworth

Science has decisively outpaced philosophy and America, the land of pragmatism, which became the leader of science, had little use for European style sophistry. No one embodied the American spirit of science better than Richard Feynman. In Feynman was a spirit of irreverence and absence of philosophy unlike Einstein who read Kant as a child. Philosophy does not even provide the questions anymore let alone answers. Schrodinger owed to illicit sex as much as he owed to Vedanta for inspiring his theories.

The questions that the authors of the Tamil book failed to ask where: Why is it that it took an Austrian scientist to find the ideas in Vedanta that could inspire a scientist and not any Indian scientist? What in the Austrian scientist's Viennese education enabled him to see in Vedanta what no Indian scientist did? How many Indian exponents of Indian philosophy arrive at the same conclusions? Above all what paradigms of the Vedic era are relevant for science today? I'll write a detailed review and rebuttal of the book later.

The traffic of knowledge across the European continent is staggering in scope and requires a meditated appreciation for the scope at which it occurred. Ideas, amidst turmoils of wars, flowed in all directions. Ideas from Frances, Netherlands, Germany and England all collided and created a new world. That books written in France, Germany and England were translated, shipped to other countries and debated in scientific circles providing a magnificent intellectual stirring is a fact that should astound us, those who live in this modern social media age, on a grand scale. What is even more important is how they were eager to learn from others and not mired in petty nationalist chauvinisms. That too, given the kind of era it was, passes comprehension.

This was to be a book review of James Gleick's "Isaac Newton" but morphed into a different tone. Gleick's book is very mediocre. The narrative is uneven and his extensive quotes in the English of that era are irritating to read. What is really a letdown is Gleick's inability to explain science in a more lucid manner. This is shocking considering that Gleick's biography of Richard Feynman, "Genius", was critically acclaimed both for the sensitive portrayal of Feynman and for the lucidity of explaining esoteric concepts like Quantum Dynamics. I read portions of Will Durant's magisterial 11 volume "Story of civilization", specifically, volumes "The age of Reason" and "The age of Louis XIV" after I finished Gleick's book. Durant, who wrote nearly 40 years ago and was no scientist, covered all the material that Gleick, writing in 2003, covers. Durant's explanations of the theories and their significances are spot on. And, as only Durant can do, he provides a panoramic perspective of that era. Gleick's book should be read only because Durant's 11 volume series is out of print.

Science has marched forth from the shadows of philosophy and education has been liberated from the clutches of Church and State paving the way for what we call today 'secular education'. Both of those achievements are now under siege from the Hindutva camp.